Share it maybe?

3 thoughts on “For everyone on my list”

My only problem with that article, as I saw it when it came out originally, is this: Ryan got me thinking last night, and Bryan, about the the statement ‘Men rape women.’ While this is true, men do rape women, repeatedly and often, the blanket statment, the generalization, is unfair and lazy. Men =/= rapists.

“I have a serious problem with the phrasing of a lot of things coming out of Shapely Prose lately; that men = rapists. Not all rapists are men. Not all men rape. Therefore men =/= rapists. Using a blanket generalization like that doesn’t do anyone any good; it’s the same as saying African Americans are criminals. Native Americans are alcoholics. Mexicans are lazy. Men are rapists. Well yes, men happen to do most of the raping, but are all men rapists? No, no they aren’t. In any given population, the number of actual rapists is low compared to the total population. The damage they do, however, is enormous. Should we not take this seriously? No, quite the opposite. But saying ‘men rape women’ as a blanket generalization is offensive and off-putting to the men out there that aren’t rapists who might actually be willing to listen to us feminists for a few seconds, y’know, until we start lumping them in with all the bad apples. People are individuals. Men are individuals and so are women (and so is everyone else who doesn’t neatly fall into a gender so easily). Blanket statements are a lazy, ineffectual way to make your point.

Also, while it is a reality that many women live in the world afraid of every man they meet, to me, this is not an acceptable way to live my life. Eventually I do have to trust the people around me that they’re not going to rape me. That’s reality. This post? Not reality.”

The article doesn’t say that all men are rapists. It’s saying that for a lot of women, they can’t immediately tell if you’ll be a rapist or not, and the risk that they’ll come into harm is far far higher than they’d like to gamble with. So if you’re not helping (by ignoring their body language and being annoying, basically), there’s no motivation for the woman to trust you.

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